Some senators are kicking around the idea of amending the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

According to InsideARM, a collectors' advocate site, the proposed law (the Stop Errors in Credit Use and Reporting (SECURE) Act of 2014) would:

- Direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to establish standards of accuracy to apply to the credit bureaus- Simplify and expand the dispute process- Allow consumers to access their credit score for free- Allow consumers to sue for injunctive relief, in addition to statutory damages- Require additional disclosures from data furnishers, and specifically debt collectors

The bill has been proposed by Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), in other words, a Democratic consumer advocate dream team with little-to-no chance of rallying support in the Senate, much less passing the bill in the House.

In the past I've written about "The Automated Future," the prediction that unemployment, stagnating wages, and the drying-up well of middle class work results not chiefly from the Financial Crisis or even the last 30 years of regressive fiscal policy, but from increased automation and efficiency reducing the need for human labor, both physical and intellectual.

As I've mentioned, the future may hold an exacerbated version of what's already happening now:

...people struggling to make ends meet, fiercer competition for existing jobs, and larger tax burdens for the employed. Competition will keep salaries low. And more people will lean on debt to survive.

So what's the best way to manage these changes, which, while they make constructing a house much cheaper, will also put thousands of construction workers out of a job? A CNN opinion suggests something that Milton Friedman was kicking around in the 1970s: a guaranteed basic income.

Here's the meat of the CNN opinion:

The idea of a basic income, sometimes called a guaranteed minimum income or a negative income tax, has been discussed for decades by notable economists like Milton Friedman. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the idea had bipartisan backing before losing steam. Recently, in the face of a sputtering economy, a weak job market and rising income inequality, it has been gathering supporters at an ever-quickening pace. In fact, just last month, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich called a basic income guarantee "almost inevitable." The concept of a basic income is not entirely abstract. Several countries, such as Brazil, have achieved notable success with their programs, lifting many people out of poverty. In countries like India, nongovernmental organizations are experimenting with pilot programs in specific areas, with promising results so far. The United States is already experimenting with a variation of basic income, even though most people don't realize it. Alaska has a small version, called a Permanent Fund Dividend, which is incredibly popular and made the state one of the most economically equal places in America. Importantly, Alaskans don't consider it "redistribution," but rather "joint ownership." The benefits of a basic income on a national scale would be wide-ranging. First, there's the lift to the overall economy if everyone has money to spend. Next, there are the obvious psychological benefits of knowing you can always afford food and shelter. Then there's the societal stability factor: If people's basic economic needs are being met—no matter what the unpredictable job market is doing—we don't have to worry about the potential for civil unrest as a result of mass unemployment. Economist Gar Alperovitz told me that a guaranteed minimum income would not only defuse the political crisis posed by worsening long-term unemployment, but would also open up the possibility of a reduction in the length of the work week. Due partly to technological innovation, we already have a situation where less work is spread among more people, and this phenomenon will increase in the future. With a basic income, this development is nothing to fear.

The 8-hour workday is as old as wage labor itself -- which is the type of labor we all do (paychecks, hours, salaries or hourly rates, time off, weekends, etc.) -- which is to say it's less than 200 years old.

Prior to the industrial revolution, the vast majority of people were subsistence farmers, with families growing their own food and selling their extra harvest for a small profit (or giving the extra to their landlord). Not until the mass prevalence of factory production did the concept of a "workday" as we know it become the industry standard. Conflict between the farmers and the growing "labor" population was arguable the major political divide in the beginning of American politics, beginning with the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution and continuing through to today. Our present ideological divide between advocates for "big government" and "small government" is in many ways just the modern iteration of the conflict between the farmers and the laborers in the early 19th century.

The 8-hour workday was a political cause before it became the standard. Before there was any awareness about the need to set labor laws, 10-16 hour workdays, 6 days a week, were regular. Child labor was widespread.

In 1817, a Welsh socialist named Robert Owen was the first to use the famous phrase: "eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest." Owen, and other political movements from laborers to socialists to Marxists to utopians, advocated for this benchmark for upwards of 100 years. Though there are no laws limiting the workday to 8-hours, 5-days a week in the US, it has become an assumption of the zeitgeist.

Today is very different from 1817. We are not essentially machine parts working in factories anymore (these sorts of jobs have been and will continue to become fully automated). Our work product is not directly proportional to the amount of time we put in. There are new considerations with the rise of the service and intellectual labor class, chiefly: efficiency.

In ﻿Sweden﻿, staff for the city of Gothenburg will be the first to experiment with a 6-hour work day. No reduction of pay, just a reduction of hours. The idea is that the staff will actually get more work done, because they will spend less timely trying to idly fill their expected 8 hours of work, and will instead work harder for a shorter period of time, thus finishing the same amount of work in less time.

"[The city] hopes that it will cut down on sick leave, boost efficiency, and ultimately save Sweden money . . . [Deputy Mayor Mats] Pilhem said he hoped the move would create more jobs, as he had seen evidence that longer shifts entailed less efficiency. In some sectors, such as elderly care, the problem was not staff shortages, he claimed, but people working inefficiently over longer shifts. He added that a Gothenburg car factory had recently tested the six-hour method and the results were encouraging."

Time will tell!

Bennett Hartz is an associate attorney at Drewes Law, PLLC who specializes in defending against debt collection and foreclosure. He can be reached by email at bennett@dreweslaw.com.

This website is designed to provide general information only and the information contained herein should not be construed as legal advice. You are NOT a "client" of the firm without express consent of Drewes Law, PLLC, regardless of your use or review of this website, your contact with the firm, or unsolicited payment made to the firm.